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by chrisseaton 1752 days ago
> IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea."

Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.

2 comments

> Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.

That's his point. He's drawing a contrast to blackout laws,by claiming that an individual sees direct benefit from compliance (not getting bombed) while breaking lockdown doesn't create a lot of risk for the vast majority of offenders.

Ie, if a hypothetical person was 100% optimizing for self-interest, they would not break blackout laws but would break lockdown laws. This is a dramatic difference in dynamics when seeking to understand differences in compliance.

> Ie, if a hypothetical person was 100% optimizing for self-interest, they would not break blackout laws but would break lockdown laws.

Yes… except that’s the other way around from what happened in reality. People did break blackout lockdown rules but they generally didn’t break COVID lockdown rules.

You said "breaking lockdown rules", not "breaking blackout rules", specifically when contrasting policies that heretofore in the conversation were described as "blackout" and "lockdown".

Though it sounds like you're saying you misspoke, and intended to say that people broke the blackout rules. That makes a lot more sense, thanks for clarifying

In the first six months of lockdown in the UK 6500 prosecutions were undertaken by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). These included non-lockdown flouting crimes which were simply flagged as 'Corona Virus related', such as threatening to cough on somebody whilst 'infected' and stealing items deemed essential for dealing with the pandemic.[1]

Your assertion that a million people were prosecuted seems far fetched.

1. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/6500-coronavirus-related-pro...

The blackout lockdown. A million people were prosecuted in WW2. It's a myth that everyone was cool with it and compliant back then.